The spectrophotometric method for determining ammonia nitrogen with thymol which had been reported by the authors has been successfully applied to the determination of as little as 3 ppm of nitrogen in uranium metal and dioxide. The method is also useful for determining nitrogen in uranium nitride, carboni tride and carbide. The absorbance per μg nitrogen was 0.00818 (molar absorptivity=1.15×10
4) at 670 mμ by the following procedure.
Metal, oxide and carbide containing up to 0.8 g of uranium are dissolved with 20 m
l of hydrochloric acid (6
M) and 5 m
l of hydrogen peroxide solution (30%). The other samples are dissolved with 10 m
l of hydro chloric acid and 5 m
l of fluoboric acid (4%), and uranium is then oxidized with a few drops of hydrogen peroxide solution. After decomposition of excess hydrogen peroxide, the solution is evaporated to dryness on a water bath to remove excess acid, and the residue is dissolved with 40 m
l of sodium citrate solution (25 w/v%). The pH of the solution is adjusted to 9.810.3 with sodium hydroxide solution (2
M) and 2 m
l of sodium hydrogen carbonate (0.06
M)-sodium carbonate (0.075
M) buffer solution. Then, 0.5 m
l of sodium hypochlorite solution containing 0.3% active chlorine is added with stirring. After 20 seconds, 2.5 m
l of a freshly prepared mixture of the equal volumes of thymol solution (10% in acetone) and sodium hydroxide solution (1
M) is added. After addition of 4 m
l of acetone, the resultant solution is transferred to a 100 m
l measuring flask and diluted to the mark with water. After standing 1.5 hours in darkness, the absorbance of the colored solution is measured against the blank at 670 mμ.
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